TUNIS, Tunisia, 18 Jun: Ministers from Germany and France tasked with regulating migration are joining forces to try to curb deaths on dangerous routes across the Mediterranean Sea, traveling Sunday for talks with the president and their counterpart in Tunisia, a major North African stepping stone for migrants trying to reach Europe at risk of their lives.
\nThe two-day trip by the German and French interior ministers, Nancy Faeser and G\u00e9rald Darmanin, follows what is feared to be the deadliest migrant shipwreck in years in the Mediterranean \u2014 the capsizing last week of a fishing vessel packed with men, women and children trying to reach Italy from Libya, Tunisia\u2019s neighbor.
\nMore than 500 migrants are presumed to have drowned in the sinking Wednesday off the southern coast of Greece that renewed criticism of Europe\u2019s yearslong failure to prevent migration tragedies.
\nThe U.N. migration agency said it could be the second-deadliest migrant shipwreck recorded \u2014 after the April 2015 capsizing of another vessel on the Libya-Italy route that killed an estimated 1,100 people.
\nA statement from the German minister\u2019s office about her trip with Darmanin said: \u201cWe want to create legal migration routes in order to remove the basis for the inhumane business of smugglers. We want the human rights of refugees to be protected and the terrible deaths on the Mediterranean to stop.\u201d
\nWith migrants, mainly from sub-Saharan Africa, undertaking perilous sea crossings from Tunisia in unprecedented numbers, European authorities are seeking reinforced action from the government of Tunisia\u2019s increasingly autocratic president, Kais Saied.
\nIn the first three months of this year, Tunisian authorities intercepted 13,000 people on boats off Tunisia\u2019s eastern port city of Sfax, a main route to Europe for sub-Saharan Africans, who don\u2019t need visas to travel to Tunisia.
\nAs well as working to reduce migrant flows from Tunisia, European authorities are also offering aid to stabilize the North African country, which is in the midst of its deepest economic crisis in a generation. European leaders visiting Tunisia earlier this month held out the promise of more than 1 billion euros in financial aid \u2014 including 100 million euros earmarked this year for Tunisian border management and search-and-rescue and anti-smuggling operations.
\nThe German minister\u2019s statement said discussions would focus on \u201cimportant current migration and security issues,\u201d including promoting legal migration channels, reducing irregular migration and people smuggling, strengthening sea rescue operations and promoting the voluntary return of migrants not entitled to stay in the European Union.
\nDarmanin, the French minister, did not detail his objectives for the trip to Tunisia in advance. But his ministry confirmed planned meetings on Monday for Darmanin and Faeser with their Tunisian counterpart and with Saied. As well as migration issues and hoped-for strengthened efforts against people smugglers, the French minister also wants to discuss security issues following an attack on a Tunisian island during an annual Jewish pilgrimage in May.
\nIn the attack on Djerba, a Tunisian naval guard shot and killed a colleague and two civilians \u2014 one of them French \u2014 as he tried to reach the 2,500-year-old Ghriba temple, one of Africa\u2019s oldest synagogues. Security guards killed the attacker. Ten people were injured. AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TUNIS, Tunisia, 18 Jun: Ministers from Germany and France tasked with regulating migration are joining forces to try to curb deaths on dangerous routes across the Mediterranean Sea, traveling Sunday for talks with the president and their counterpart in Tunisia, a major North African stepping stone for migrants trying to reach Europe at risk of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-218645","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218645\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}